Comparing manual trans options - variables other than gear ratios?
If a lower than 11:1 first gear is eating up your gears you have some other issue. That makes no sense to me unless you think you have to be in second gear by 1500 RPM.
Good call, not everyone thinks like me, so,
Eating up my gears means;
I only have four of them, so if I waste First gear with more Torque Multiplication than I need, then I gotta pay the Piper at the other end, with more cruise rpm than is necessary.
That is the whole reason that I have a 360, namely to run a smaller number rear gear and still have decent take-off torque. I couldda built a 340, I mean I had 4 or 5 of them kicking around. But the 20 extra cubes makes a heck of a difference when you want to run a rear gear of say 2.94s, for 65mph=2380rpm; which gives you a starter of just 7.82..
My car is geared the way it is, to make Second the gear of choice. Second is ~11.8mph per 1000rpm; so
3000 is 35.4mph and 6000 is 70.8mph.
First is used for two things, parading, and for getting into Second.
Second does all the rest .
Third is used mostly just to get to cruising speed and then I stuff it into Fourth.
To the guy who mentioned breaking blocker rings;
If your trans is doing that, on the street, then, IMO, it is not set up right. I have been banging A833s on the street, almost continuously since 1970, and have yet to break a blocker, any blocker. I wear out the ones on Second gear, but I don't break them.
I get that it happens on the old-style square-cut windows, I mean that's probably why they went to the newer style; But I never broke one of those either, and I probably have 250,000 miles on one of those, about the same on a different A833 with the newer style.
Then again, I rarely side-step the pedal.
